It feels like the Lenovo U300S is an Ultrabook that many many people had been waiting for. The first reviews were out in November last year but availability has been limited in the consumer channels, which is surprising because this isn’t a B2B product. In Europe today, just weeks before the 2nd-Generation Ultrabooks launch, there’s still a limited number of places where you can buy it, and still at original prices. Surprising, because this is a good Ultrabook. It’s not without a few issues but you’ll find out about them in our full review below.
It’s time for some extreme testing. Seriously, skip to the summary if you just want to know if the Lenovo U300s has good, average or poor battery life. Stay with us if you want to learn more about how efficient this neat little Ultrabook is. We’ve completed a suite of tests here that we hope gives you an idea of how the battery life would work out for your use case.
In summary we were a little disappointed in the Lenovo U300s we have here. Background power usage is much higher than many other Ultrabooks and the screen requires a lot of power to make it bright enough to use. The U300S has a relatively large battery which helps to provide good battery life figures despite the so-so efficiency. Turbo seems to work well and cooling performance is good. The fan is there when needed but doesn’t give us any nasty surprises.
The Dell XPS 13, Toshiba Z830, Lenovo U300s and Samsung Series 5 were with me towards the end of week so in addition to the live webcast, I took the opportunity to try and do a round-up video.
It’s time for another live session here at Ultrabooknews. Friday 11th at 2000hrs 2100hrs (9pm Berlin, Your timezone here.)
We’ve already received the Lenovo U300s here and tomorrow we’re expecting a Dell XPS 13 so it makes sense to put them together with the other two Ultrabooks we already have here and to give you the chance to interact with, oh, lets just call it the biggest live Ultrabook review ever!
I’m also pleased to announce that we have a special guest. Patrick Moorehead of Moor Insights and Strategy will join me for an Ultrabook discussion at the start of the session. Patrick has been tracking the mobile computing sector and steering companies for many years. He’s a former VP of Strategy for AMD and I know it will be fun and enlightening to talk to him. Your questions are welcome, of course.
I really like user reviews. You get a longer-term view on the device and the owner has enough time to find those smaller issues that can sometimes grow into annoying ones. There’s one such issue here in the Lenovo U300s review below that Daniel Rourke [Twitter] sent in but in general he’s a very happy U300s customer.
If you’d also like to contribute to Ultrabooknews, drop me a line via our contact page. If you’re in the industry, an expert analyst, an owner/user or just have something serious to put forward, I’ll consider it for publication.
Those of you that are considering the Lenovo U300s should check this good video review out. Ultimately, the UX31 is regarded as better than the U300S, even where the trackpad is concerned. I was surprised.
Screen brightness and battery life are also said to be better on the UX31 although Mobile Tech Review do regard the U300S as a good Ultrabook all-round with a solid build, full size HDMI and a good Centrino WiFi card.
The choice is yours but if you need to wait for another opinion and even a live review and Q&A session, stay tuned here because we are close to securing the UX31, U300s and the Z830 for detailed testing at Ultrabooknews.
Following news that the Lenovo Ideapad U300s is nearing retail shelves is the first full review I’ve seen for the U300s. Acer UX31, you have some competition because Hardware Zone Singapore definitely have the green flag out for the Lenovo U300s although it has to be said that these guys haven’t done a review of the Asus UX31 yet. ‘As Good as It Gets’ is restricted to comparison with the Acer S3.
First though, a round-up of the differences between the Lenovo U300s and Acer UX31 which many of you will be choosing between right now.
The Lenovo Ideapad U300s matches the ASUS UX31 almost spec-for-spec and both appear to be ready to go. Pre-order pages are up (see our information page for the Amazon affiliate links that are available) and at least one website has one for testing. The first statement from James Kendrick, the reviewer for ZDNet was that the Lenovo U300s is “already the best Windows laptop I have ever tested.” Let’s hope there’s no showstoppers as the testing progresses.
While the U300s only has a 1366×768 resolution screen against the UX31’s 1600×900 screen, there are other differences deeper in the specifications. Customers are going to have a hard time deciding between the two…
